MOVIE COMMENTARY: Season Of The Witch (2011)

“Thanks for taking this meeting. I’ve got a great movie for you. We take Nic Cage and Ron Pearlman, send them to Eastern Europe for a couple months (Ron’s already there, it’s his off-season from Sons Of Anarchy), and have them run around as knights from the Crusades escorting this hot girl in a cage who everybody thinks is a witch and stuff. And they’ll act like they’re in a buddy-cop movie. We’ll put poor, old Christopher Lee in hideous makeup and Ron will have this giant wound on his head that won’t heal, even though they’ve been walking around for months. And we’ll name the picture after that Donovan song so people will think the movie is either a biopic or a car commercial. …Yes, I said Nic Cage. What’s the problem?” (IMDb)

TO SYNC WITH MOVIE: start this commentary 10 seconds after starting movie (chapter 1 for DVD/BD).

Am I the only one who noticed that Cage seemed to have modeled his character’s look on the singer from Nickleback?

Seriously, the whole time couldn’t help but sing “This is how you remind me…” in my head. So that’s another reason to hate this movie. It made me think of Nickleback.

Also, long before I saw this I read the original script, which won the Nicholl award and ended up on the ’09 Black List. And it was actually pretty good. It wasn’t brilliant but it’s clear that interference, reshoots and general incompetence robbed this movie if any virtues it may have had.

Bragi Schut has another script in development called LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER, based on the passage from DRACULA about his coffin’s sea voyage from Transylvania to London. Last I heard David Slade was signed on to direct it with the delicious Noomi Rapace to star.

I enjoyed the shit out of that script so I hope it doesn’t get as screwed up as this one was.